Skepticism from a Godless Conservative

Senator Feinstein’s Double Standard

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) seems to have a double standard as to the NSA’s collection of digital data.
She believes that there’s really much ado about nothing to the collection of data on U.S. citizens as she lays out in this piece she wrote recently for USA today. In fact she defends this program as having been “effective in helping to prevent terrorist plots against the U.S. and our allies.”
The Senator also states that “The call-records program is not surveillance.” Really? So just accessing my phone records to see the calls I’ve made and received is not surveillance? I think that’s a bit of a stretch. A onetime look, with a warrant, isn’t surveillance; continuously monitoring call patterns of millions of U.S. citizens frankly is surveillance.
Go ahead and read the piece yourself. First glance seems to be it’s all for the good of America. We know however that they’ve lied before. Remember when Clapper was asked point blank whether anything like this was being done to American citizens? What was his response? No.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist but if there’s nothing nefarious going on, as Senator Feinstein tells us in the op-ed, why did Mr. Clapper openly lie about the existence of the program to Congress? Sure, anyone can say that the reason is that they (he) didn’t want to alert the terrorists to American methods, but does anyone really believe that in the 21st century these bad actors are not aware that at least some of their communications are being monitored?
Of course, there’s the recent report about 60 million calls being monitored in Spain during a single month. Any outrage there Senator? Nope. Not a peep.
For some reason though, Senator Feinstein is totally opposed to the same NSA collecting similar information on foreign leaders. Here’s the money quote:

Unless the United States is engaged in hostilities against a country or there is an emergency need for this type of surveillance, I do not believe the United States should be collecting phone calls or emails of friendly presidents and prime ministers. The president should be required to approve any collection of this sort.

So, it’s just the leaders of a country that we’re not engaged in hostilities against that shouldn’t be monitored. The citizens of said country, well, that’s different. Does anyone recognize the hypocrisy in that statement?
If someone reading this thinks that I’m placing all the blame for this on the Obama administration, please be consoled that I do not believe that any of these programs actually began under the current President. They’re just a continuation from previous administrations. Yes, I said administrations. You don’t actually believe this hasn’t been going on for quite a while now, do you?
We’re in an age now where everything we say online or on the phone will come under some sort of government scrutiny. If you have a connection to the Internet, everything is up for grabs by these same people.
I don’t know about you, but this worries me.